Friday, 13 July 2012

Neil Turner, killed cycling to Oval - start of the Tour du Danger. A tube driver, Mini fan, Millwall supporter, father and soon-to-be husband. An all-round Londoner killed, in my view, on a road designed in a way that makes deaths unavoidable.

Hundreds of people setting off from Oval tube station to protest for safer roads for cycling last year, courtesy @zefrogThis is where Neil Turner was cycling to when he was killed on his bike

The facts are pretty simple. Serious injuries of pedestrians and cyclists in London rose dramatically last year. The number of people killed cycling also rose dramatically last year. By all accounts, it looks like the number of people being killed on bikes will be higher yet again this year. And the Mayor is still saying that everything's fine, you just need to 'keep your wits about you'. My bet is that Neil was keeping his wits about him. But he wouldn't have stood a chance on a road like this, designed to put him in the most vulnerable position possible.

It shouldn't be like this. We have world-class roads and motorways and we have skilled and hard-working road engineers behind them. But the money and the design is only for motor vehicles. People on bikes are expected to somehow fling themselves down roads like this and survive.

It's not good enough. It's time we had world-class routes for people to use on bikes, instead of exposing them quite deliberately to fast-moving, intimidating roads where the likelihood of being injured is TEN-TIMES higher per mile cycled than it is in countries like the Netherlands.